


overdoing it

by weirdmilk



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, also? hopefully some humour, not really fluff and not really angst, second chap may hurt a bit, somewhere in the middle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27100093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weirdmilk/pseuds/weirdmilk
Summary: Oikawa Tooru is pushing thirty, with a crumbling volleyball career, a knee that won't forgiveorforget, and he hasn't spoken to Iwaizumi in ten years.A fic about closing old wounds and bridging gaps.‘You have to do something about this,’ Hanamaki muttered, lifting up a kit kat wrapper he’d found down the side of one of the cushions, and pointing it menacingly at Oikawa. ‘This is so gross. So gross.’ He paused. ‘You need a change of scenery. Some fresh air.’‘Tokyo air is fresh,’ Oikawa muttered.‘Freshly smoked,’ Hanamaki said, and Oikawa rolled his eyes.‘Look, I’m fine,’ Oikawa said peevishly. ‘Is it the best week of my life? No. Is it the best month of my life? No. Is it the best -’‘I get it,’ Hanamaki said hastily. 'You know what you need? A holiday.'
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 16
Kudos: 93





	1. the old ways

The end had been sudden. 

Oikawa had landed wrong, heard a popping sound in his bad knee, and been on the ground before he had been able to scream. 

And that was that. 

He had known as soon as he hit the ground that it was over. He didn’t need the numerous doctors, nurses, and physical therapists to tell him that - although they did anyway. He had just known it, deep in his bones, or, more accurately, his anterior cruciate ligament, which had been torn through. 

'I'm so sorry,' the doctor said to him, in early January, when Christmas decorations were still mockingly hanging in the office, 'but I think it's most unlikely you'll return to professional play.'

Oikawa wasn't stupid: he knew what 'most unlikely' really meant. It meant 'never'. 

'Sir?' The doctor was watching him, an expression of clinical concern on her face. 

Oikawa said, numbly, 'Yeah, I kind of had a feeling.'

The doctor frowned at him, unimpressed by his feelings. ‘Given the history and the severity of the tear, I think surgery is the best option for you to recover the majority of the function in the knee.’ 

‘I -’ 

‘ - Had a feeling?’ the doctor asks, and this time a smile flits across her face. ‘’Well, two for two.’

‘It’s rotten luck,’ his coach said, after the surgery, staring at the vase of drooping lilies so he didn't have to look Oikawa in the eye. ‘We could have done it, this year.’ He sighed gustily, setting his moustache wobbling. ‘We’ll have Kageyama, but he’s not so good at motivating the team… never looks as good in the publicity shots, either…’ 

Oikawa snorted, despite the fact that he had been marinated in some kind of thick melancholic glaze. That was true. When he had seen the first poster of Kageyama’s face, he had laughed until he felt sick, and then bought ten.

‘Well, I’m sure you’re busy,’ he lied, after a silence that went on several beats too long. ‘I should be getting on. Best wishes for your recovery.’ He bowed, and scuttled away. 

His recovery, as it was, would be slow and incomplete. He would walk again, as a near certainty. He would run again, probably. But volleyball, with its quick pivots and its sudden movements, was confirmedly out of the question. 

There was a grim inevitability about it, he supposed. His knee had never quite recovered from his teenage over-exertions, and although he had kept that knowledge somewhere locked and private, he was still aware of it. He had always known that his knee was the one cloud on the horizon, but that cloud had always looked so far away, so unthreatening. He thought he’d have more time. But he’d always thought that, about everything. 

And in other ways, too, it was unsurprising. By nearly any metric he was a young man. He was approaching thirty with the speed of a formula one car, but in almost any sphere other than athletic, he would be starting his career rather than limping away from it. But life as a professional volleyball player was short. He ached in the mornings, now. He was not eighteen anymore. 

When he was discharged, his knee a constant heavy throb under his sweatpants, the young nurse smiled at him. She was pretty, with bleach-blonde hair the texture of brushed out yarn, and in another universe he might have flirted with her - asked her out. But in this universe he was just another name on a list, just another athlete with another ruined body, and a calender with nothing pencilled in. 

‘Don’t overdo it,’ the nurse told him cheerily, and he almost laughed at the lateness of it - wanted to tell her every time someone had told him that exact thing, and the percentage of times he had listened. But he smiled at her, and thanked her, and told her that of course he wouldn't. She had returned his smile in that way that women often did: a mixture of interest and coyness, their chins turned down and their eyes up. 

Once home, the boredom set in immediately. He wasn’t made for long days inside doing nothing: the hours felt interminable, stretched out like a snowfield. Every day was the same: full of the pitiful throb of his knee, and counting out painkillers, and trying to believe that the outlook wouldn’t always look so stormy. His healing, at least, was going well: the physical therapy was helping, and after two weeks he was hopping around his apartment on crutches, and weaning himself off the harder painkillers. 

‘Don’t overdo it,’ the physical therapist told him, after one particularly brutal session, in which Oikawa had spent nearly the entire time with his face screwed up in agony. ‘But you’ll get there.’

‘It's a bit late for that,’ Oikawa snapped, his self-control severely weakened by the fact that he was trying not to cry. 

The physical therapist - whose name Oikawa could not recall - gave him a considering look up and down, landing on the knee. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said, and the genuine sympathy in his voice made Oikawa want to kick over the chair, knee be damned. 

This was the life he had wanted. His apartment was in a cool part of Tokyo, painted in cool whites and greys. He had so many magazines with his face on them that he’d had to buy a storage container just to keep them in. He got recognised, sometimes: there were often small children who wanted his autograph. This, he thought again, angrily, was the life he had wanted - that he had worked himself into the hospital for. So why did he feel as though he’d been so betrayed? So lied to? 

He pulled a bottle of expensive wine from his fridge. He poured himself a glass, even though there was no one to chastise him if he drank it straight from the bottle. 

He had just poured himself a third glass, when his phone rang. He glanced at the name on the screen, and then saw, to his surprise, that it was Hanamaki. Hanamaki was the only person he had kept in contact with from high school. He had moved to Tokyo several years after Oikawa had, refused to let Oikawa cut him off as he had everyone else, and ended up a mainstay in Oikawa's life. 

He picked up. ‘Makki!’ He managed to inject a certain amount of cheer into his voice. 

‘I’m outside,’ Hanamaki said. ‘With food.’ 

Oikawa was stunned into a horrified silence for a moment. He stared belligerently at the damned crutches. ‘But - I haven’t cleaned - and I have nothing in -’ 

‘Well, good thing I knew this wasn’t a restaurant,’ Hanamaki said. ‘Or a show home. Nothing can be worse than the Seijoh locker rooms, anyway.’ 

Oikawa looked around at his kitchen, dubious. It was covered in takeout boxes, empty bottles and soda cans. The dishwasher was full of clean dishes that Oikawa hadn’t put away, and the dirty ones had piled up on top of the counters, looking like some hideous natural formation. It looked like the home of someone exceedingly depressed, Oikawa thought, with a sudden burst of unwelcome self-awareness.

‘I don’t know about that,’ he said.

‘Don’t be a dick,’ Hanamaki said merrily, ‘just let me in. Or I’ll sleep out here, and tell everyone why.’

Oikawa groaned and hopped to the door. There was nothing for it. Hanamaki was at least half as stubborn as he was, and that was more than enough to make his life unpleasant should he not give in. He tried not to think about the reaction that was waiting for him on the other side of it. 

He opened the door, and as expected, Hanamaki’s mouth dropped open. ‘Jesus!’ 

‘Surprise,’ Oikawa said wearily. 

‘What the fuck!’ Hanamaki said with feeling. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I fell,’ Oikawa said sullenly, brattily. 

‘From a twenty-story building?’ Hanamaki goggles at him. 

‘Oh my God,’ Oikawa said, more to himself than Hanamaki. ‘Do I look like human paste? And can we not do this standing up?’ 

Hanamaki raised his hands in a gesture of temporary surrender, moving away from the door and sitting on Oikawa’s pristine white sofa in his dirty-looking jeans. 

‘How long are you out?’ Hanamaki asked, while Oikawa painfully lowered himself down onto the chair next to him. 

Oikawa felt a lurch in his stomach. He hadn't admitted it out loud yet, and he wasn’t sure that he could: to tell anyone that he would never play again felt so antithetical to his existence that he wasn't sure the atoms of him would let him speak it. 

He cleared his throat, and said hoarsely, ‘Forever.’ 

Hanamaki’s mouth dropped open again, but this time, he said nothing. 

‘Yeah,’ Oikawa said, laughing shortly.

‘Jesus,’ Hanamaki said again, in a tone usually reserved for funerals. ‘I am so, so sorry, Oikawa. Like, you know I love nothing better than to abuse you for all the stupid shit you’ve done, but - this is truly, truly shit, and I’m so sorry.’ 

The sincerity was, Oikawa thought miserably, much harder to take than the abuse. 

‘I just - I am in shock,’ Hanamaki said, ‘because usually when you go quiet for more than a few weeks it means you have done something ridiculous, but it’s usually like - a wildly inappropriate girlfriend, or something.’

‘Not always,’ Oikawa said, hurt. ‘You liked the Spanish one.’ 

‘I did not like the Spanish one,’ Hanamaki said grimly, ‘because she only spoke Spanish.’ 

They frowned at each other. 

‘I can’t believe you’ve forced me to say this,’ Hanamaki said, ‘but … I am a little concerned.’ He grimaced. ‘Well, I was concerned, now I’m... horrified.’ 

Oikawa thought he remembered what a smile looked like, and attempted to recreate one. ‘Makki-chan, worried about me!’ he cooed.

Hanamaki wrinkled his nose. ‘That shit hasn’t worked since high school, and even then, hardly ever.’ 

Oikawa dropped the artificial sweetener, and shrugged in acknowledgement. 

‘You have to do something about this,’ Hanamaki muttered, lifting up a kit kat wrapper he’d found down the side of one of the cushions, and pointing it menacingly at Oikawa. ‘This is so gross. So gross.’ He paused. ‘You need a change of scenery. Some fresh air.’ 

‘Tokyo air is fresh,’ Oikawa muttered.

‘Freshly smoked,’ Hanamaki said, and Oikawa rolled his eyes. 

‘Look, I’m fine,’ Oikawa said peevishly. ‘Is it the best week of my life? No. Is it the best month of my life? No. Is it the best -’ 

‘I get it,’ Hanamaki said hastily. 

Oikawa jiggled his healthy leg mulishly. 

‘You know what you need?’ Hanamaki got out his phone and started thumbing at the screen. ‘A holiday.’

‘I do not need a holiday,’ Oikawa said testily. ‘I am _so_ happy here.’ He hoped Hanamaki hadn’t noticed that he was speaking through gritted teeth, but from the derisory snort that floated up from the sofa, he thought that unlikely. 

‘Alright,’ Hanamaki said, after a minute of intense scrolling. ‘Okay, don’t get mad.’

Oikawa frowned, because that was the kind of statement that got a man asking questions. He folded his arms, making no promises.

‘I have booked you a holiday.’ 

Oikawa stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘You can’t just book a holiday and make me go on it.’

‘I can though,’ Hanamaki said, ‘because you are weakened at the moment.’ He grinned. ‘And I know the guy who owns the place.’ 

Oikawa groaned. ‘This is a hostage situation.’

‘Well, maybe you'll develop Stockholm syndrome,’ Hanamaki said, and Oikawa scowled even harder, the furrows of his forehead deepening into trenches. 

‘Well, tell me where,’ Oikawa said, after a minute of curiosity wrestling his affected disinterest to the ground. 

‘Okay, this is the bit where you can’t get mad,’ Hanamaki said.

*

Ohira. Miyagi. A tiny village nestled half an hour from Sendai. 

Oikawa hadn’t been back to Miyagi in years. As far as he was concerned, that prefecture may as well have collapsed into the ground. The person who had lived there had shared his name, but nothing else, and he felt no kinship with him. When he had left for Tokyo, freshly nineteen and unaware of how to use a washing machine, it had felt like tucking the first part of his life away in the back of a closet. A new start. Nothing could follow him there. And nothing had. 

He had considered staying in Tokyo. But part of him, now that he had digested the idea a little, was undeniably curious. He knew that he was, to put it euphemistically, at a low ebb. He didn’t quite see how things could get worse, and that rock-bottom mentality made him feel a little more reckless - a little more willing to loosen the bonds on his tightly-controlled life. Maybe letting Hanamaki make one unimportant call wasn’t the worst thing in the world. 

And so in the end, he had decided to go. Why not? And three weeks later he had found himself at the tail-end of a journey from Tokyo to Sendai, after promising his physical therapist he'd keep up with exercises for however long he ended up being away. He was on a freezing cold, ancient bus, shivering despite his coat and scarf, his crutches resting smugly next to him. Ohira Castle zoomed past the windowpanes, and Oikawa, who had been provided with detailed directions by Hanamaki, pressed the button. 

‘Thank you,’ he said to the driver, bowing as he dismounted awkwardly and carefully. 

He took a moment to gauge his surroundings. The evening was dark and cold, his breath coming out in clouds. He was on a dull, residential road, lit with a few humming, orange streetlights. It felt very much like stepping back twenty years. As he hopped along, the path devolved from a potholed road into a mud track, and it became ten times harder to remain upright. He thought longingly about punching Hanamaki in the face, and wondered whether perhaps it would have been better to sink into stuporous catatonia in peace, after all. 

The darkness felt very quiet, after Tokyo living. It was the kind of cold, dull evening that compelled him to stay in, rather than go out. The sound of his crutches meeting the dirt was the only thing he could hear, save for occasional engines. There were no houses around him anymore, and the thought popped into his mind of how easy it would be to murder him at that moment. 

His phone beeped, and a message popped up on the screen congratulating him on finding his location. He glanced up, half-expecting some kind of anomalous palace, but instead, he found himself standing in front of a deeply ordinary-looking house, gently spotlit by the fingernail-shaped moon. 

Had he not been told that this was the place, he would have walked straight past it. There was nothing to suggest that anyone lived there, let alone that he was supposed to be staying there. It was small and ramshackle, and even in winter, it was so covered in green that it looked as though it had sprouted organically from the earth. It was painfully provincial, and, once again, Oikawa found himself silently cursing Hanamaki. 

There were heavy stone steps ascending to the house itself, and Oikawa paused for a moment to readjust his crutches. The countryside, he thought, not for the first time, wasn’t worth the effort. He rapped his gloved fingers smartly on the door, and heard an answering shout from inside. 

The front door slid open, and Oikawa’s mouth did the same. 

‘Iwa -’

The one small satisfaction was that Iwaizumi Hajime looked as flabbergasted as Oikawa felt. 

Silence stretched out between them. For all Oikawa’s years spent mingling and schmoozing with the best of Japan, he could not think of a single thing to say to the tired-looking man in sweatpants standing in front of him. 

‘I -’ Iwaizumi said. 

‘You - we -’ Oikawa stammered, just as inanely. 

There was another excruciating pause as they stared at each other. Iwaizumi recovered first. ‘Oikawa Tooru,’ he said, and stuttered out a shocked laugh. 

So it really was Iwaizumi, Oikawa thought hysterically. He felt as though he had seen the end of the world, right in front of him, in a white t-shirt and bare feet. 

‘There must have been some mistake,’ Oikawa said, already backing away as best he could with the full use of only one leg. ‘Hanamaki -’ 

Iwaizumi startled. ‘Hanamaki?’ 

Their eyes met, and the truth of the situation was written across both of their faces.

‘That fucker,’ Iwaizumi said darkly. ‘He asked me to put a friend up for a few days.’ His eyes kept flickering to Oikawa’s crutches. 

Oikawa let out a shaky breath through his teeth. Hanamaki was a dead man.

Iwaizumi looked up at the sky. ‘It’s about to snow,’ he said. ‘The next bus isn’t until the morning.’ He gave Oikawa’s crutches another appraising look, and Oikawa could tell he was putting two and two together, making four. 

‘I can sleep outside,’ Oikawa said frantically.

Iwaizumi had the audacity to give him a strange look. ‘I was going to suggest you come inside.’ He gave the crutches another glance, and then looked at the sky, which was the pale grey of dirty dishwater. 

Oikawa didn’t move. The pain in his knee was shifting from a low groan to a loud shriek, and he needed to sit down, badly. It was that more than anything else that made his mind up. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, aiming for casual, ‘that’s very… kind.’

Iwaizumi’s face was the same colour as the sky. ‘Please come in,’ he said, as though there was nothing unusual about any of it, and Oikawa felt too blindsided to protest any further. He stepped over the threshold. 

The inside of the house was as pastoral as the outside. It was full of plants, and the walls of his living room were painted a pale green. There were pieces of Iwaizumi’s life strewn over the surfaces in a way that Oikawa had never allowed to happen in his own apartment. A curation of letters, photos, posters were all stuck haphazardly on the wall with tape - which, Oikawa thought fastidiously, would certainly take the paint off when the time came to remove them. Oikawa recognised Iwaizumi’s family amongst the paper audience, and some of their old teammates, but the more recent the photographs, the fewer people Oikawa could name. 

‘Through there,’ Iwaizumi said, gesturing vaguely down the corridor. ‘First door. Sit down,’ Again, he glanced furtively towards the crutches. Oikawa was already tired of it. 

Oikawa made his way there, very aware of Iwaizumi’s eyes on his retreating back. When he reached the sofa, after picking a likely-looking path through countless plants he couldn’t name, he collapsed on it with the gratefulness of a starving man given a sandwich. He fumbled in his pocket for a painkiller and took it dry. 

Iwaizumi sat down on the chair opposite, and there was another beat of terrible, awkward silence, during which Oikawa contemplated gnawing his own leg off, before Iwaizumi, to Oikawa’s astonishment, burst out laughing. 

‘What the fuck is this?’ Iwaizumi wheezed. ‘Is this a dream? What the fuck? You - _you!_ \- show up on my doorstep looking like you haven’t eaten or slept in weeks? Am I being filmed? Is this some kind of trick?’ He looked around wildly, as though he really was expecting some videographers to crawl out of the little jungle around them. 

Oikawa groaned long and loud. ‘It’s not a trick,’ he said, thinking privately about how much he’d enjoy seeing Hanamaki being set on by wild dogs. ‘We just have the worst friend in the world.’ 

‘Right, well, it’s snowing,’ Iwaizumi said, as though Oikawa hadn’t noticed, and with the air of a man trying desperately to steer the conversation to things he understood. ‘You need to stay here until it’s safe.’ He jerked a nod at the crutches: the first time he’d acknowledged them. ‘If you go back out there you’ll slip and die, and that would be...’ He made a face. Oikawa wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to express.

Oikawa wondered whether Iwaizumi had watched him at the Olympics.

‘I’m so sorry for the intrusion,’ Oikawa said, partly because it was true, but mostly because he didn’t know what else to say. It was possibly the worst situation he'd ever been in. 

‘Don’t apologise,’ Iwaizumi said. ‘Hanamaki though…’ 

They both smiled - the first real crack in the awkwardness. ‘I should have known something was up,’ Oikawa muttered. ‘When has he ever done anything normal?’

Iwaizumi’s eyes crinkled. ‘Can you get up? I’ll show you your room.’ 

Oikawa wasn’t sure that he could. ‘Yes.’ He hissed in pain when he reached over for the crutches. 

Iwaizumi bit his lip, looking torn, then rolled his eyes, and let Oikawa get on with his wobbly, inelegant rise.

Iwaizumi led him to a small room near the back of the house. It seemed less cluttered than the rest of it, devoid of any plants, save for one small cactus on the windowsill, and the bed was only a single. But it looked clean, and for one night it was more than adequate. Oikawa declined to think about what would happen if the snow didn’t dissipate by the next day. 

‘Thanks,’ Oikawa said, and then in a desperate, ill-advised rush, ‘it’s good to see you.’ 

Iwaizumi stopped dead with his hand on the doorknob. He nodded, mute. He opened his mouth, but he closed it again, and turned away. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, and closed the door behind him, allowing Oikawa to see that his expression had taken on the feverish terror of an animal caught in a trap. 

Now alone, and desperate for any kind of distraction, Oikawa took the opportunity to inspect the room. He recognised one of the photos on the wall: the final picture of their Seijoh team. His teenage self’s eyes were bloodshot and swollen, but he was throwing up a defiant peace sign. Iwaizumi’s arm was loosely thrown around Oikawa’s shoulder, and he was flipping off the camera with a blurry finger. Kindaichi looked worse than either of them: his mouth open in a silent wail, his eyes were screwed up against the torrent of misery making its way undeterred down his cheeks. 

He opened his phone and typed out to Hanamaki: **I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!**

There was, predictably, no reply.

****

**WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?**

****

**YOU BETTER SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN!!!!!!! ( ≧Д≦)**

He pulled off his jacket and folded it on the back of a rickety wooden chair next to the bed. He sat down on the bed, staring beseechingly up at his former self, as though he held the answers. But that Oikawa kept smiling unseeingly out of the photograph, saying nothing - just a shadow of a memory of a boy he barely remembered being - who may as well have never existed. 

Tiredness had crept up behind him, and sitting on the bed had made him realise how exhausted he really was. Still in his jeans and shirt, he lay on top of the sheets, his mind refusing to quieten. He could not account for the fact that he was here, in Iwaizumi’s house, smelling the same deodorant that he had smelled for at least ten years, staring at the same photograph he had had on his own walls, once. 

Sometimes people just grow apart, he thought to himself, firmly, miserably, and closed his eyes.

*

He awoke to newly renewed pain, and a cool blue glow emanating from the windows. He hopped over to the glass, and despaired at what he saw: a white blanket of snow, so unspoilt and perfect that it felt like the universe was mocking him. He was still in his clothes from the night before, and he felt a sharp stab of self-disgust. 

Iwaizumi appeared in his eyeline, holding a large bag with a picture of a chicken on it. Oikawa watched from behind the glass as Iwaizumi opened the door to what looked like a shed. He poured some of the grain out, and there was an immediate cacophony of clucking. Oikawa tried not to be too charmed.

Iwaizumi straightened up, turning suddenly towards Oikawa’s window. Oikawa gasped, feeling caught, and tried to hide behind the wall. The attempt was thwarted, however, by his inability to move quickly, and he sighed, admitting defeat. He reluctantly lifted a hand in greeting. 

Iwaizumi motioned at him to come outside. Oikawa thought that was a terrible idea, but he put his coat back on anyway, and slithered his arms back into the crutches’ rings.

Once in the garden, the cold air felt like a slap, and he inhaled sharply. His coat wasn’t practical; he had bought it because of how thin it made him look. He was regretting that now, though, as the chill easily muscled past the thin fabric, and settled in against his skin. 

Iwaizumi was watching him with a furrowed brow. It was hugely reminiscent of their childhoods, and it made Oikawa ache with some kind of longing that he didn't want to inspect too deeply. ‘You alright?’ 

'Great!’ Oikawa said through chattering teeth. 

Iwaizumi sighed heavily, and headed back towards the house. He returned with a thick blanket, and wrapped it around Oikawa’s shoulders. ‘Don’t move,’ he grunted. ‘I don’t want you to tip over.’ Oikawa didn't protest, feeling like a well-behaved pony. 

Once he was satisfied, Iwaizumi stepped back, putting his hands on his hips. ‘We’re gonna be here a few days at least,’ he said bluntly. ‘We may as well make peace with it. Let’s do this properly. Catch up.’ 

‘Out here?’ Oikawa gestured at all the snow. ‘Like, now?’

‘It’s bracing,’ Iwaizumi said, and it was Oikawa’s turn to roll his eyes. 

Iwaizumi pushed a sheet of unbroken snow off a mystery structure, which turned out to be a little white plastic table. From underneath that, he pulled out a set of plastic chairs. They’d avoided the worst of the snow. 

‘I know it’s not what you’re used to anymore,’ Iwaizumi said, waving around the white garden, ‘but it’s home for me, still.’ 

‘It’s hard to get used to Tokyo that much,’ Oikawa said. ‘It’s always changing, it feels like.’ 

Iwaizumi sat down heavily on one of the chairs, letting out a breath that was visible in the cold air, and Oikawa sat next to him, rubbing his hands together to warm them a little.

‘I should have brought some beer,’ Iwaizumi mumbled, tapping his fingernails rhythmically on the plastic table. 

‘You should have brought something stronger,’ Oikawa said, his tension rendering his usual filter useless. There was a beat, before their eyes met, and they both laughed, revelling in the naked truth.

‘I have wine,’ Iwaizumi said, ‘that my mother bought me. Expensive wine. From Europe somewhere.’ 

‘Europe where?’ Oikawa asked. ‘Because French wine is good - but Greek wine is terrible!’ He wrinkled his nose at the very thought of it. 

‘I don’t know,’ Iwaizumi said patiently, ‘because I’m not as pretentious as you are, but if you pretend to like it, I’ll let you have some.’ 

‘I can’t promise anything until I’ve tasted it,’ Oikawa said, but he felt giddier than he had in years, and he would, in truth, have promised anything at that moment. 

Iwaizumi got up and disappeared into the house. The sun was still low, and the earth was still filtered through a dark light. The air was so much cleaner than it was in Tokyo: he could see for miles, and there was no smog strangling the blue. 

When Iwaizumi returned, as promised, he was carrying a bottle of wine, and two sake glasses. ‘I don’t have wine glasses,’ he said, when he saw Oikawa eyeing them, ‘but my parents did give me these when I moved here.’ He shrugged, smiling crookedly. ‘Keeps liquid in.’ 

He poured as much into the small cups as could feasibly remain unspilled. Even so, when he passed Oikawa’s glass to him, some dripped onto his jeans, bleeding red into the fibres. Iwaizumi opened his mouth to apologise, but Oikawa cut him off.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. He raised his glass. ‘To…’ 

Iwaizumi said, ‘To old friends.’ 

‘To old friends,’ Oikawa repeated slowly, after thinking for a moment. It wasn’t what he’d been going to say.

The strangeness of the situation overwhelmed him in bursts, like waves breaking on a shore. He was sitting out in the garden with a man he hadn’t spoken to in almost a decade, drinking wine before the sun had even properly yawned itself awake. Iwaizumi must have been feeling something similar, because he was drumming his nails on the table again, a nervous habit Oikawa recognised immediately, even though it had been years since he'd seen it. 

Oikawa drained the last of his wine, considering it a necessity. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m pretending I like it.’ 

Iwaizumi snorted. ‘Still an asshole,’ he said quietly, almost to himself. 

Two glasses down and Oikawas was beginning to feel a buzz. He hadn’t drunk much alcohol the past few months, and his tolerance was badly lowered. ‘Let’s do it then,’ he said benevolently. ‘The whole catch-up thing.’ 

They exchanged a glance over the tops of their glasses. It felt to Oikawa as though they were approaching dangerous territory, but the wine had made it difficult to tell how close they were. 

‘You go first,’ Iwaizumi said gruffly. 

Oikawa felt nervous, despite the wine’s warm glow. ‘I don’t know how much detail to go into,’ he admitted. 

‘As much as you want,’ Iwaizumi said, unhelpfully.

‘Um,’ Oikawa said, ‘well, I moved to Tokyo. And I lived in Tokyo. And I still live there. You?’

Iwaizumi said, ‘I stayed in Miyagi.’ He smiled at Oikawa, raising his glass, and there was challenge to it. 

Oikawa groaned, and said, ‘You gotta give me more than that, Iwa-chan.’ He realised too late that he’d fallen back into old habits as easily as slipping into a warm bath. Iwa-chan! Hearing himself say it added another layer of surreality. Even in his own thoughts he had always tried to keep a respectful distance from Iwaizumi, but ten years of that distance was being worn away in hours. 

Iwaizumi’s eyes flickered towards him, but neither of them commented on the slip. ‘I help at Seijoh sometimes. They’re good kids. One of them - he reminds me of you at that age.’ 

Oikawa wrinkled his nose. ‘I don’t remember being fifteen anymore.’ 

Iwaizumi laughed. ‘I remember it,’ he said. 

‘I remember _you_ being fifteen,’ Oikawa said. ‘But you always seemed older.’ 

‘Someone had to be.’ Iwaizumi kept his eyes firmly on the glass in his hands. ‘You were terrible at looking after yourself.’ 

‘How are your parents?’ Oikawa asked, sidestepping the unsubtle invitation to discuss the knee. ‘I miss your mother’s cooking. You know I can’t cook.’ 

‘She still likes you more than me,’ Iwaizumi said, and then laughed. ‘I think it breaks her heart when she asks after you and I don’t know the answer.’

That one hurt.

‘I hope you just tell her I’m as handsome as ever!’ 

‘Well, I can’t lie to her,’ Iwaizumi said seriously. There was a ruminatory pause, as Iwaizumi swirled the red liquid around in his glass. ‘Dad died six months ago,’ he said. 

Oikawa’s stomach dropped. ‘Oh...’ 

Iwaizumi shrugged in acknowledgement. ‘It was very quick. Cancer. I took a year off to look after him. But he only lasted six weeks.’ He gestured around him at the grass, the ramshackle house. ‘He left me this place, and enough money so that I could take some time off.’ He seemed to remember, suddenly, that Oikawa knew nothing about him anymore, and added, ‘I’m a gardener.’ 

That explained the plants, at least, Oikawa thought. It was a lot to take in, and he was at a loss for words. He thought, angrily, that he would have known what to say before, but this was the after, and between those two states of being there was nothing but emptiness. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he found himself saying. ‘I wish you’d said something -’ 

Iwaizumi snorted. ‘Fucking great conversation starter that would be. “Hello Oikawa, my dad is dead”.’ He shrugged, amusement fading into sombreness. ‘It is what it is.’

‘I just... ‘ but there was no good way to finish that sentence. 

‘It’s fine,’ Iwaizumi said, and Oikawa could tell that he meant it. ‘What could you have done?’ 

It hurt Oikawa’s chest to hear it, even though it was true.

‘So what about you?’ 

Oikawa swallowed quickly. ‘Ah, volleyball,’ he said. ‘There’s no time for anything else!’ The crutches stood tall next to him, an obvious monument to his lie. But he couldn't say it yet. Not to Iwaizumi. 

Iwaizumi hummed in response, but said nothing else, and his gaze was slow and steady, and Oikawa couldn’t meet it. 

*

When all the wine was gone, and the sun had meandered its way to the middle of the sky, Oikawa decided that he needed a nap. Conversation had become too difficult for his alcohol-marinated brain, and he was beginning to find it difficult to trust his own judgement. 

‘Just for ten minutes,’ he said. He was drunk enough that his words slurred a little, but not so drunk that he didn’t notice. 

Lying on his bed, he closed his eyes. He felt uneasy in a way that had nothing to do with the wine. Stop it, he thought to himself. Stop it. Stop it. It’s done. But his thoughts landed on that photograph on the wall, the two of them tanned and white-toothed, smiling, happy, hopeful.

He slipped into a restless sleep, and in his dreams, he was ten years younger.


	2. Chapter 2

When he blinked back into consciousness, he tried not to think about the fact that he had fallen asleep twice in the same clothes in twenty-four hours. His mouth tasted disgusting, and there was the beginning of a dehydration headache pulling at his skull.

He felt amazing. 

Oikawa had seen his own face on billboards, twenty feet across. It hadn’t come close to the cosmic rush of seeing Iwaizumi again - to drinking bad wine with him when it the world was silent and snowed-still, to hearing his gruff, low voice saying his name again. 

And God, he thought, wasn’t that terrible? How fragile this happiness was - how delicate. He had to return to Tokyo as soon as the snow was gone. What then? The thought of returning to his cold, lonely apartment made him feel as though he had been dipped in cement. But then: he had extricated himself from Iwaizumi on purpose, and that easy joy he found in him was one of them. It was too much. It was dangerous. 

Thinking about that felt worse than the dehydration. 

He swung his legs over the bed without considering his knee, and was rewarded with a sharp stabbing pain. He buried his head in his hands and sighed. He was a mess. He hadn’t showered, he hadn’t eaten. A day with Iwaizumi and his life had been totally upended. But nothing else mattered anymore - except more of this. The rest of his life could burn down, and he would dance in the flames, as long as he could keep this. 

The hunger of hardly having eaten in twenty-four hours propelled him out of his bedroom once more and into the kitchen, where Iwaizumi was already sat eating eggs. There was an uneaten portion opposite him. 

Oikawa was expecting some kind of friendly greeting, after the morning they’d had, but instead, Iwaizumi’s face darkened, and he motioned Oikawa over. Oikawa swallowed nervously. 

‘What the hell is this?’ Iwaizumi asked, thrusting his phone in front of Oikawa’s face. 

Oikawa read the lurid headline. OIKAWA TOORU: CAREER-ENDING INJURY!

His stomach dropped, and he snatched the phone, staring down at it properly. ‘That’s a terrible photo of me,’ he said, squinting.

Iwaizumi spluttered. ‘That’s not... is it true?’ 

Oikawa had always found lying to Iwaizumi difficult, especially when the question was direct. But he desperately didn’t want to acknowledge the reality of his new life yet, either. He felt trapped between the awful truth and an easy lie, and neither of them felt like the right option. 

‘Oikawa?’ Iwaizumi asked again, more softly. ‘Is it true?’ 

‘Yeah,’ Oikawa said shortly, after another brief mental tussle, handing Iwaizumi’s phone back. 

Iwaizumi seemed to be at a loss for words. ‘I didn’t - Jesus, I had no -’ He shook his head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Oikawa frowned at him. ‘Same reason you didn’t tell me about your dad, I would imagine.’ 

Iwaizumi was quiet. When Oikawa chanced a look at him, he expected to see anger, but instead, there was a deep well of concern. Oikawa’s stomach did another somersault: to see that expression hurt, deeply. ‘Does it hurt?’ 

Oikawa felt horribly disarmed. ‘Yeah,’ he said again, choking a laugh. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Iwaizumi said quietly. ‘I know how much volleyball meant to you. Means to you,’ he corrected himself. 

‘Meant,’ Oikawa said bitterly. He sighed deeply. ‘It was never the same after Seijoh, anyway.’ 

Iwaizumi raised his eyebrows, surprised. ‘You won silver at the Olympics.’

So he had watched, Oikawa thought, filing that knowledge away in his pocket. 

‘Okay, well, that was pretty good,’ Oikawa admitted, laughing. His smile ebbed back into a straight line. ‘I don’t know. I feel like…’ He paused, suddenly realising that he was about to say too much, too quickly, too soon. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he finished stupidly. 

Iwaizumi gave him another one of those strange looks. ‘No, you can say it.’

Oikawa smiled and shook his head, and Iwaizumi dropped it, lowering his eyes back to his phone and his lunch, but there was unfinished business hanging in the hair like a spiderweb, and he didn’t know how to fix it. 

‘Snow’s melting,’ iwaizumi said, conversationally, looking out of the window, and Oikawa wanted to cry. 

Oikawa sat down heavily, and they ate together quietly, Oikawa’s happiness melting away with the snow. 

*

‘I’m dropping off some fertiliser at Seijoh later,’ Iwaizumi said. ‘You wanna come?’

Oikawa’s immediate reaction to the question was abject panic. Something of it must have shown in his face, because Iwaizumi frowned. ‘You don’t have to.’ 

Oikawa shook his head. He both desperately wanted to see his old school, and to pretend that it had never existed. He felt, sometimes, that he had peaked at seventeen. He’d never been happier than during those three years. It had been a constant state of being. At the time, he hadn’t recognised that for the rarity that it was. 

‘I want to,’ he said, although that wasn’t quite true - but explaining would take too long, and it would result in Iwaizumi looking at him funny again. 

They both piled into Iwaizumi’s tiny, rusty car, the crutches lying between them like a dividing line, and when the engine gallantly spluttered into being, Oikawa was surprised. 

The journey to Seijoh wasn’t long, but it felt it. The week just kept getting stranger and stranger, Oikawa thought, watching the scenery become more and more familiar as they drove, until they started passing herds of teenagers in the same unform that they had spent three years in. 

‘I still love those trousers,’ Oikawa said, a little wistfully. ‘They were so cool.’

‘Cool?’ Iwaizumi echoed scornfully. ‘They were pretentious and ugly.’

‘I like pretentious and ugly, I think,’ Oikawa said, sadly.

Iwaizumi laughed, and Oikawa felt absurdly pleased. ‘You said it, not me.’ 

Iwaizumi parked in the staff car park and unbuckled his seatbelt. He gestured at a bag in the backseat. ‘You don’t have to come in,’ Iwaizumi said. ‘I’m just passing it to someone.’  
Oikawa said, ‘Is it weird if I do go in?’ 

Iwaizumi shrugged. ‘It’s a bit weird. But I don’t care. Just be back in ten minutes.’ 

Oikawa nodded, feeling a little tense. But he got out of the car, taking a deep breath of the rarefied air of his old domain. He couldn’t remember well enough to say whether it smelled the same, but it certainly sounded the same: a cacophony of laughter, of shouting, of youth. If anything, that made him feel older than ever. 

He gazed up at the imposing cement structures. The last time he’d stood there had been when he was still a teenager - before he had been anyone, really. He had been a blank piece of paper, an about-to-be, an up-and-comer. And standing there now, he was a limping, grey had-been. If he squinted, he could imagine the sway of his blazer as he walked - his bag hitting against his side, with the bottle of water he always carried sloshing around inside.

In that moment, he missed it so deeply and desperately that if he could have pressed a button to return, even at the expense of all his adult progress, he would have done it. 

‘Oikawa? Is that - Oikawa Tooru?’ 

He knew the voice. Oikawa turned to be greeted with the expectant, smiling face of his old coach, Irihata Nobuteru. His hair had fully greyed out, and his face looked as though it had been scored into with a compass, such were the depths of its wrinkles.

For a moment Oikawa was struck dumb, but he quickly recovered his faculties. ‘Coach! Yes, it’s me! How could you tell?’ 

‘No one else is vain enough to have that hair,’ Irihata said, and Oikawa made a wounded sound. ‘What are you doing here?’ 

‘Iwaizumi’s dropping something off,’ Oikawa said. ‘I’m staying with him for a… while.’ He adjusted the grip on his crutches. 

‘Iwaizumi too!’ Irihata enthused. ‘You know, the two of you together - it was perfect synchronicity. The games you two played together were some of the best I’d seen in my career. And then - of course I saw you at the Olympics. Really wonderful.’ Irihata looked to be bursting with pride at the thought of one of his players at the Olympics.

Oikawa didn’t know how to respond. He was deeply aware of the crutches - he felt as self-conscious of them as though they had been coated in neon signs, but Irihata had not asked, and he was thankful for that. 

‘You know,’ Irihata said, after Oikawa ‘Mizoguchi is leaving at the end of the month.’ Oikawa raised his eyebrows, and Irihata laughed. ‘I know he wasn’t your favourite. I’ve been looking for a replacement for weeks, and I can’t find anyone. If you think of anyone…?’ His eyes made the same journey that Iwaizumi had: down to the crutches, and back. 

Oikawa said, ‘I wish you the best of luck with your search, sir.’ The thought of recommending anyone else to Irihata made him feel quite light-headed with jealousy, but he pushed that thought into a box, along with everything else he didn’t want to think about. 

Irihata smiled at him. ‘Do you want to see the gym? I’m sure the team would be delighted to see you.’ 

‘Yes, sir, I’d love that,’ Oikawa said, and it was almost sincere. 

As he followed Irihata, he was very aware that he was tracing the exact footsteps of his own history. He wondered whether there was anything left of him. Maybe a hair trapped in the carpets. A button had fallen off one of his shirts, once. He wondered whether that was still somewhere on the grounds. 

‘Come in,’ Irihata told him, once they were at the gym. Oikawa hesitated briefly. He looked up at Irihata for confirmation. 

Come,’ Irihata said. ‘The king must revisit his kingdom.’ There was a teasing twinkle in his eye, but something about his tone made Oikawa think that perhaps he understood more than he was letting on. At any rate, he was glad that he hadn’t mentioned the knee. 

He opened the door, and was hit with a smell so deeply familiar Oikawa thought that it must be coded into his DNA. The rush of familiarity flooding him was so intense that for a moment he felt eighteen again, the Grand King, his whole life ahead of him, with a body that had never been sliced open.

There were a group of kids warming up in the white-and-teal shirts that Oikawa still dreamed about. Oikawa was struck by how tiny they all looked. Had he ever been that small? 

‘Hey!’ a voice shouted. ‘That’s Oikawa Tooru!’ 

There was a moment of quiet, as the boys turned as one to appraise the stranger. And then, jubilation. 

‘It’s really him!’ 

‘I’m sorry about your leg!’ 

‘Can you sign my shirt?’

Oikawa couldn’t help enjoying the delight on their faces. ‘Hello!’ he chirped. ‘I used to go here too!’

‘We know,’ one of the tallest boys - at least 190, Oikawa thought clinically - said eagerly. ‘Irihata still talks about you all the time!’ He emphasised the last few words. Oikawa laughed, thrilled. 

The boys in front of him resembled nothing so much as a gaggle of ducklings. They were so young, he marvelled again. He cast his eyes across the group, looking for any visible signs of brilliance. But he didn’t know them; his eyes weren’t trained on them. All he saw was unspoiled potential, like a clean sheet of paper. 

He thought back to his old training regimens. He wondered how useful the new generation would find them. He swallowed down the urge to ask them. 

In the end, he signed all of the boys’ arms, and several notebooks, pieces of dirty paper, and even one shoe. He said goodbye to the boys and Irihata, promising to contact him if he thought of anyone suitable to take on the coaching job, and left the gymnasium feeling a mixture of nostalgic longing and deep satisfaction.

Making his wobbly way back towards the car, he saw Iwaizumi already sitting inside, thumbing at his phone. As he approached, Iwaizumi glanced up, his face lighting up, before schooling itself into something more neutral.

‘How was it?’ iwaizumi asked, as Oikawa settled back into the passenger seat.

‘They all wanted autographs,’ Oikawa said, smugly. 

Iwaizumi groaned and put his face in his hands. ‘Jesus Christ.’ 

‘And Irihata talks about me to the new kids!’ Oikawa crowed. ‘How amazing is that!’

Iwaizumi groaned even louder. ‘Unbearable. You are fucking unbearable. Irihata should be ashamed of himself.’ 

Oikawa put his hand to his forehead in mock exhaustion. ‘Don’t trouble me. I’m worn out from all the autographing.’ He paused. ‘They’re looking for a new coach.’ 

Iwaizumi’s hand paused in mid-air on the way to the steering wheel. ‘What did you say?’ 

‘I said “good luck”,’ Oikawa said. 

‘Hmm,’ Iwaizumi said, after a short silence, and his hand started moving again. ‘Well, I dropped off the fertiliser. Let’s go.’ 

‘Why did they want fertiliser?’ Oikawa asked. ‘Surely they have a groundskeeper taking care of that.’ 

‘They do,’ Iwaizumi said shortly. ‘This was for a friend.’ 

‘A friend?’ Oikawa prompted, sensing blood in the water.

Iwaizumi drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He was holding back. 

‘Iwa-chan has a secret teacher girlfriend,’ Oikawa sing-songed, trying to ignore the deep discomfort that idea held for him. 

Iwaizumi turned to look at him with not a small amount of contempt. ‘You gonna keep that shit up?’ 

Oikawa said, ‘Oh my God, you do!’ 

Iwaizumi was certainly blushing now, jiggling his knee as well as tapping his fingers. ‘It wasn’t like that, Shittykawa.’ 

‘Tell me!’ Oikawa demanded. 

Iwaizumi groaned out loud. ‘You are the most incredible asshole I’ve ever -’ 

‘Ha, you think I’m incredible!’ 

Iwaizumi groaned again. He said, ‘I met him in a bar a few years ago. He’s a friend of my brother’s. We went out a few times. That’s it.’ His gaze was fixed resolutely on the road, despite there being no cars in sight. His ears were red. 

Oikawa felt the same pain as when he bent his knee too far.‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So you’re -’ 

‘Yes,’ Iwaizumi said shortly, hands tightening on the wheel. ‘You know that. You’ve known since we were kids.’ 

Oikawa didn’t answer immediately, and when he did, it was weak. ‘I don’t think I-’ 

Iwaizumi said, ‘You’re not gonna pretend you didn’t know, are you?’ 

Oikawa swallowed. ‘It’s just not something I had ever -’ 

‘ - thought about?’ Iwaizumi laughed a little goadingly. ‘I’m not sure about that one either, Oikawa.’ 

‘It’s just none of my business,’ Oikawa said, desperately trying to keep the conversation on an even keel. He could sense, once again, that danger was close, and now with no wine blunting his senses, he knew that it was close enough to take shelter, had there been anywhere to go, except straight on. 

‘You make everything your business,’ Iwaizumi said. ‘Used to. Maybe still. Asking me about my - whether I’m -’

They had arrived back at the house. Oikawa hadn’t noticed. When Iwaizumi stopped the car, it felt very final.

‘I’m sorry,’ Oikawa said, as they walked up the grassy path, the final traces of snow still clinging to the ground, ‘that was - sorry. It’s none of my business.’ 

Iwaizumi stopped dead, just as he opened the front door, and turned around to face Oikawa. He was angry, Oikawa realised with a dawning horror. ‘I’m not ashamed of it.’

‘I know!’ Oikawa said. ‘I’m sorry - I know!’ 

‘I know you never understood that,’ Iwaizumi said, and his eyes were fiery and dark, ‘that I might - that I knew, and that I was okay with it. That I didn’t want to pretend. Hide it. Run away to Tokyo.’ 

‘I do understand!’ Oikawa said, his own anger rising at the last very pointed barb. ‘I never said it wasn’t okay!’ 

Iwaizumi laughed. It was an ugly, bitter thing. ‘You didn’t have to say it. You made it pretty fucking clear.’ 

‘It was never about - that!’ They were skirting dangerously close to a fight, now. 

‘You knew,’ Iwaizumi said, ‘you knew that I was -’ and now it was he who seemed to be struggling to put words to feelings. ‘And you -’ 

Oikawa was thrown. ‘I didn’t - I was so young; I didn’t know anything.’ 

‘Eighteen,’ Iwaizumi said, almost managing to suppress the bitterness in his tone. ‘I was eighteen too, you know. But one look from you, I would have…’ He blew out a large gust of air. ‘I hoped you’d come back. For months. I hoped you just needed some time. I didn’t want you to be as cruel as everyone said you were.’ He laughed shakily. 

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Oikawa’s hand was trembling when he wiped his sweaty hair out of his eyes. ‘It wasn’t like this huge bulletpointed masterplan. I just - couldn’t handle it! God, I wish I was even half the supervillain that everyone thought I was.’

‘Do you remember?’ Iwaizumi asked. ‘When we - ?’ 

Oikawa stared at him, all the anger drained away, leaving only shock. 

‘You do remember.’ Iwaizumi’s voice had dropped, but the anger had been replaced with a terrible sort of desperation that Oikawa wasn’t sure he’d ever heard from him before, and he felt, with the kind of certainty borne from terrible situations, that he never wanted to hear him sound like that again. ‘I know you remember. You didn’t drink that much.’ 

Iwaizumi’s shoulders were hunched, and it made him look so much smaller.

‘Iwa-chan…’ Oikawa unthinkingly reached out a hand. 

‘Don’t!’ Iwaizumi said. ‘You can’t pretend that you don’t know, and then…’ He swallowed and took a deep breath. ‘Do you regret it even a bit?’ 

‘What?’ Oikawa managed, his voice childish and high. ‘Iwa-chan, I -’ 

‘Okay,’ Iwaizumi said, and although he said it quietly, something about the tone made Oikawa stop talking immediately. ‘I don’t think I can… do this.’ 

Whereas before Oikawa’s chest had been beating so fast it felt as though he must have two hearts, it suddenly felt as though there was nothing in his ribcage at all. ‘Do what?’ he managed. ‘We’re just - like you said - friends, catching up…’ As soon as he said it, he knew it was done - and it was just the same as when he landed wrong, and he’d known, immediately, that it was finished, it was over. 

He caught Iwaizumi’s eye, and saw that Iwaizumi knew it, too, and an understanding passed between them, like electricity down a wire. 

‘You need to go,’ Iwaizumi said, and he was walking backwards back down the path, cradling the back of his neck in his hands. He looked sick and grey. ‘Please. I can’t do this again.’ 

There was nothing to say, so Oikawa said it. Numb with horror at the speed of the deterioration, he limped back to the bedroom, and shoved his clothes back into the backpack, paying no attention to the details that he usually would have. Who cared? None of it mattered. When he slammed the front door shut, Iwaizumi didn’t try and stop him. 

There was nothing else to do but to leave the way he had come. It felt as though it had been years since he had walked there from the bus stop on that freezing afternoon. And the further away he got from Iwaizumi’s house, the worse he felt, until he was quite sure that he would vomit if he didn’t stop and take some deep breaths. He took the breaths, but they steadied him less than he wanted, and he still felt terrible to a depth that he was not sure he had ever felt before. 

The further away he got, the worse he felt. Every part of him screamed to turn around. He couldn’t remember ever feeling such a pull in his bones - the feeling that he was leaving some important part of his soul in that little house, and willingly walking away from it. 

Iwaizumi had asked him whether he remembered. Oikawa remembered.

It had been like this: there had been a party. It had been the final party of the summer, before the third years scattered to the winds. He couldn’t remember whose party it had been; he supposed that wasn’t important. But the whole team had been there, along with quite a lot of alcohol, and the freedom that came with no parental presence. Oikawa remembered seeing Kunimi wrapped around a small, pretty blonde thing, and sneaking a blackmail photo. 

He didn’t have any reason to believe that the party had been anything out of the ordinary. There had been so many of them. They all melded together in a blur of music, and dancing, and the warmth of being with friends.

But that night had, in one key way, been different. The party had kindled into a low-key, tired affair. It was very late - or very early - and most of the attendees had gone home or fallen asleep. At parties, Oikawa was typically the last person to fall asleep, and the first person awake, and he had been sitting on top of the countertop in the kitchen, watching the silent streets outside. The stars had been bright that warm night, Oikawa remembered. The moon had been big, and the street was filtered through silver. 

Iwaizumi had found him. That was not unusual: Iwaizumi was usually the second-last person to crash. So when Iwaizumi had wandered into the kitchen, hair a mess and lipstick on his collar, Oikawa hadn’t thought anything of it. Well, Oikawa amended: that wasn’t strictly true. Oikawa had noticed, not for the first time but perhaps with a different degree of intensity, that Iwaizumi looked good, that night. 

They had been drinking, but neither of them were particularly drunk. Iwaizumi’s approach had been steady. Oikawa remembered that, clearly. 

Oikawa had reached out. ‘Lipstick,’ he’d said, and tried to rub the offending mark off Iwaizumi’s shirt. It didn’t help: if anything, it made the stain wider. 

‘It’s okay,’ Iwaizumi had said breathlessly. ‘Spin the bottle. It was on the cheek.’

‘Who?’

‘I dunno her name,’ Iwaizumi had said. ‘Short. Chubby.’ Oikawa had been pleased by the casual dismissal.

‘You’re an idiot,’ Oikawa had told him. ‘Spin the bottle isn’t for cheek kisses.’ 

Iwaizumi had looked at him, long and considering. ‘What’s it for?’ 

Oikawa had already been a little drunk, but something about the way Iwaizumi was looking at him made him feel more intoxicated than he had ever been in his young life. 

It hadn’t felt like a conscious decision to pull Iwaizumi close to him, between his thighs. Iwaizumi had been very warm, and he hadn't seemed surprised. He had wrapped an arm around Oikawa's waist with no hesitation at all. Oikawa still remembered the way that Iwaizumi had smelled: a mixture of washing powder and the cheap deodorant he had smelled again in Iwaizumi’s new house. 

And if that hadn’t felt like a conscious decision, the kiss that Oikawa planted on Iwaizumi’s soft mouth felt even less so.

‘That,’ Oikawa had said. His voice had sounded different to his own ears. 

Iwaizumi hadn’t said anything in response. Oikawa remembered that his eyes had been very wide, and his body had become very still. But he hadn’t pulled away. In fact, he had leaned in even closer, and slowly placed a line of chaste kisses on Oikawa’s collarbone. And their eyes had met, and it had felt like an earthquake, or the birth of a new star, or a terminal illness. And there had been more kissing after that - the two of them alone in the glowing kitchen, eyes closed, Iwaizumi between his legs, craning his neck up to kiss Oikawa, who was bending down to meet his mouth. 

Perhaps they might never have left had Matsukawa not stumbled into the kitchen, empty glass in his hand, drunk and stupid. 

‘Oh!’ Matsukawa had slurred, ‘you guys are still here.’ 

At the first sound of footsteps, Iwaizumi had violently extricated himself from Oikawa’s thighs, backing away. His eyes had been very wide, his face white.

Oikawa didn’t remember feeling that same shock. It was something deeper. It was a gnawing sickness in the pit of his stomach. The sense that he had released something that could not easily be put back.

There had been no reason to look back, as he walked out of the room, ignoring Matsukawa’s questioning tones. He hadn’t heard what he’d said. 

The next morning, Iwaizumi’s number had flashed across his screen in an incoming call notification. Oikawa had declined the call. And when three more calls came in, in quick succession, he did the same. Iwaizumi had stopped calling after the twelfth. 

Three days later, as planned, he had packed all his belongings in his parents’ car, and they had driven him to Tokyo. And Iwaizumi had never called him again, and Oikawa had never had to decline any more of his calls. 

He was at the bus stop. He hadn’t noticed. 

To his great relief, the bus arrived only minutes after his arrival, so the cold didn’t have time to bite too sharply. But inside it was no warmer, and soon, with the lack of warmth that came from walking, Oikawa was shivering badly. He was the only passenger, and he pulled his case right to the back, sitting down, burying his face in his hands. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d never made such an all-encompassing mistake. He flashed back to the moment that he’d been told that his career was over, and felt nothing. That had been a papercut, compared to this - this was the loss of his lungs. 

The rocking motion of the bus was soothing, and he hugged his own chest like a child. The journey to the train station was long. He leaned back in his seat. The seat smelled of stale smoke and sweat, but he couldn’t locate the disgust that would usually be there. He willed himself to sleep. The lack of active misery was the best he could hope for. 

His wish to sleep must have been granted, because the next thing he knew, the bus was juddering to a halt outside the train station. He thought he would feel relieved to see it, but the closer he got to his own home, the worse he felt. But he just had to get there. As soon as he was back in his own apartment he would be free to lick his own wounds, to grieve.

The rest of the journey passed in fits and starts. Sometimes he was aware of the passage of time, and sometimes he felt as though he existed on a different plane to everyone else around him. At Tokyo Station, he bumped into a woman carrying a baby. He must have looked at least half as terrible as he felt, because upon his mumbled apology, she paused, and said, ‘Sir, are you alright?’ 

He touched his cheeks. They were wet. He hadn’t noticed.

He didn’t answer the woman, even though she called out to him again as he walked away. There was nothing she could do. 

Tokyo was as bright as ever on the walk home. Usually, he loved the sight of the neon slashing through the darkness, but that night it felt as though the city was taunting him personally. It had snowed a little there, too, although there wasn't much of it, and what was there was grey, filthy slush. In front of him, a man in a thick, beautiful coat leaned to the woman walking next to him, kissing her cheek. Her peals of laughter grated upon every single nerve Oikawa had left. He averted his eyes, and stared upwards, trying to catch a glimpse of the night sky through the lights, and the buildings, and the trees. 

‘Oikawa?’ 

Oikawa’s heart stopped. For a moment, he thought wildly that it must have been Iwaizumi, but then he turned around, and saw that it was Hanamaki. He was standing in the middle of a small group of very stylish people, and they were all looking at him with some interest. 

‘Isn’t that -’ one of the girls began. 

Hanamaki cleared his throat pointedly, and she fell silent. ‘You guys go on ahead,’ he said.

The group lingered for a few moments, watching Oikawa as though he was a cabinetted curiosity, but Hanamaki ignored them until they turned away, and started a new conversation. 

‘Are you alright?’ Hanamaki sounded concerned. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be -’

Oikawa shook his head. 

Hanamaki didn’t ask for details. ‘You going home?’ 

Oikawa inclined his head mutely. 

‘I’ll walk you,’ Hanamaki said, and Oikawa didn’t have the energy to argue. 

They didn’t speak on the walk back. All the annoyance at Hanamaki’s meddling - all the promises to himself of deep, unspeakable violence on their next meeting - had melted away into a quiet, placid gratefulness that he was there at all. Hanamaki was a friendly, grounding presence, and when they got to Oikawa’s building, he followed Oikawa inside up the stairs until they were both standing outside the front door. 

‘I’ll come in,’ Hanamaki said.

Oikawa let them both inside, and locked the door behind them. A wall of cold air hit him: he’d turned off the heating before he’d left, and it was freezing inside the apartment. 

Hanamaki shivered. He must have turned on the light, because suddenly the room was bathed in light, and Oikawa found himself staring at the same old food containers, the same shoes by the door, the same clothes strewn haphazardly around the chairs. 

It did not feel like coming home.

Hanamaki was watching him, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. ‘I’ll make tea.’ 

Oikawa watched him busying himself with the kettle, humming a little tune to himself. The kettle joined in, whistling. Hanamaki poured two cups, and brought one over to Oikawa, who took it in two hands, letting it warm them. 

‘Okay,’ Hanamaki said. They both sat down. 

Oikawa took a sip of his tea, and it did make him feel stronger. He let out a long sigh. Hanamaki was still watching him, and Oikawa slowly raised his gaze to meet Hanamaki’s. 

‘You wanna talk about this?’ Hanamaki asked evenly. 

Oikawa shrugged. ‘Not much to tell,’ he said. 

‘You saw him?’ 

‘I saw him.’ 

'How did it go?' Hanamaki asked, with real gentleness, when it was clear Oikawa wasn’t going to elaborate on his own. 

Oikawa shook his head. He didn’t - couldn’t - talk about it yet. 

Hanamaki watched him over the rim of his teacup, his eyes kind. ‘You know, Oikawa - I… am not an idiot.’ 

‘News to me,’ Oikawa mumbled. 

‘He told me,’ Hanamaki said. ‘About that party. He told me years ago.’ 

Oikawa’s hands started shaking. The tea was sloshing dangerously close to the edges of the mug. He knew he had to say something, but all the words were stuck somewhere between his stomach and his throat. ‘What did he say?’ 

Hanamaki looked uncharacteristically nervous. ‘He said - that you kissed him, and then you just… left.’

Oikawa felt as though his body didn’t exist anymore - that he was simply a formless being floating along channels of shame, and anger, and guilt. ‘I -’ There was nothing to say, because it was true, and awful, and now Hanamaki knew the worst of all of it. 

‘You don’t need to explain,’ Hanamaki said, more kindly than Oikawa knew he deserved - and he couldn’t have explained, anyway. ‘I know what you were like back then.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘You were a bit scary.’ 

‘I wasn’t scary,’ Oikawa mumbled, ‘I was an idiot.’ His voice came out in a strangled whisper when he burst out a miserable confession - ‘When I think about what I did to him -’ 

‘You know,’ Hanamaki said, ‘I think he forgave you even before you left. I think he knew - well, thought - that that was the end. Before you left, he was already talking about you like you’d died.’ 

Oikawa’s shame swelled like a broken bone. He had never been confronted with proof of Iwaizumi’s own pain before. It disturbed him, now, how little he had considered it. He imagined Iwaizumi in his little cottage, while Oikawa schmoozed around dimly-lit bars and bedrooms. He hoped Iwaizumi hadn’t been lonely. 

He sighed. ‘Maybe it’s for the best.This is - it's the life I always -’ kind of envisioned. You know. The eligible bachelor.' He tried for a wobbly smile, but he knew his hands were still shaking too much to attempt a peace sign. 

Hanamaki snorted, but it didn't sound amused. 'Yes, Oikawa, I'm sure this is the life you envisioned, because you are incredibly pessimistic.' 

Oikawa’s throat felt tight and hot. 'Hanamaki -'

‘Don’t you want to be happy?’ Hanamaki interrupted. ‘Like - if you could remove all the voices in your head that tell you you have to weigh that much, and that your hair has to look like this, and that you have to marry a beautiful woman, and have two beautiful children… don’t you think you’d know what the answer is?’

The tears had spilled, and ran unchecked down Oikawa's cheeks. ‘I know what I want,’ he whispered. 

'I know you do, really,' Hanamaki said, 'that's what makes it so sad.' 

Oikawa knew that the tears were streaming down his face, but he couldn’t stop them. 

‘He’s missed you for ten years,’ Hanamaki said quietly. And then, in a voice edged with contrition, ‘I’m - sorry, Oikawa, I know I shouldn’t have meddled, and I know this is my fault- but the two of you apart like this - I couldn’t bear it anymore -’ 

Oikawa shook his head. He knew that in another world he would have been angry, but he just couldn’t feel it, here. ‘I just miss him so much I think it’s gonna kill me.’

The two of them sat in quiet together for what felt like a long time. It was peaceful, in a way, and by the time Oikawa insisted that Hanamaki go home, he was feeling calmer, and a little more prepared to look his own life in the eye. He thought about what it would look like five years down the tracks. His apartment would still be cool and modern and expensive. His bank account would still be full. He would be even older. That part worried him, but there was nothing he could do about it. He imagined a wedding - his own. He could see the guests, the seats, even the cake - but he could not picture the bride. He could not picture himself. It was empty. 

He felt along new edges of old thoughts, slow and careful. He let himself imagine something different. He thought about Iwaizumi’s small, busy house, crouched in the middle of grass and weeds and flowers. His heart beat faster. He imagined not a wedding, but something different, and better: a life, with all the pain still there, but put away, in a place where it couldn’t touch either of them. He could see himself there, clearly. He could see Iwaizumi. It was easy. 

That was it. He knew what he wanted the picture to look like. It wasn’t a thunderbolt realisation. It was a tired, grudging acceptance, ten years in the making, that there was only one real, golden choice to make, and that everything else was just glitter. What options he thought he’d had had been reduced to just one imperative: Iwaizumi. He knew - finally, he knew - what he had to do. A strange calm had descended on him. He wondered if it was the same sort of calm that people felt before being led to the gallows. 

But the gallows would wait. He had to sleep. He closed his eyes, letting the sense of calm inevitability rock him into a sleep as dark and soundless as the bottom of a lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry i left it here lol........... the final chap will be out this week tho! :)


	3. Chapter 3

Oikawa hadn’t been asleep for long when he was startled awake by heavy thuds on the door. He sat bolt upright, for a moment thinking that it was an earthquake. But the floor stayed still, and his cactus on his bedside table stayed standing tall. He scrabbled around for his phone. He startled for a second time at the amount of notifications on the screen: seven missed calls, and twenty new messages, from a number he didn’t recognise. He wondered whether someone had died.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to shake the sleep from his heavy limbs, and the door banged again - harder and more urgently, and Oikawa groaned, feeling glad he had at least had the presence of mind to change into pyjamas rather than sleeping naked. 

‘Alright,’ he muttered to the dark, empty room and fumbled for his crutches, stiffly hopping to the front door. He hoped darkly that the person on the other side had a very, very good reason for waking him when sleep was the only respite he got from the total disaster that his life had become. 

He unbolted the door, and pulled it open a little more roughly than was necessary, ready to take out all his frustrations on whoever was standing there. 

‘He-oly shit,’ Oikawa managed instead. 

‘Oikawa,’ Iwaizumi said - because it was him, standing bedraggled and wet like a used cloth in the middle of his doorway, shivering in a thin hoodie and jeans. 

Oikawa heard a neighbour’s door open, too, and his panic reached critical levels. 

‘You maniac,’ Oikawa whispered, his natural inclination to not make his neighbours think he was completely insane briefly overpowering his equally natural inclination to throw himself at Iwaizumi’s feet and cry. ‘Get inside!’ 

Iwaizumi got inside, moving stiffly, leaving a slug-like trail of water on the floor. 

‘Sit down!’ Oikawa said, and then, ‘oh my God, you are soaked - let me -’ 

‘Stop flapping, holy shit,’ Iwaizumi said, his teeth chattering, which Oikawa thought was monstrously unfair given the circumstances. ‘Let me talk.’ 

‘Please,’ Oikawa said, doggedly, having a pretty good sense where this was heading, and trying to fend it off until he felt a little less inclined to burst into tears. ‘Wait a minute - not like this -’

‘Yes, just like this!’ Iwaizumi said forcefully. ‘I have to tell you before I -’ he laughed suddenly, sounding quite crazy, and wrung some water out of his hoodie. Oikawa stared at the spreading puddle that Iwaizumi was standing in. ‘I actually do love you, Oikawa, despite everything, and I just - I had to come here and tell you, because the second you left I knew I’d fucked up so badly, so… here I am,’ he finished somewhat lamely, still shivering.

‘You have to put dry clothes on,’ Oikawa said, his voice breaking.

Iwaizumi stared at him. ‘Did you hear me?’ 

‘Yes,’ Oikawa said desperately, ‘but you have to put some dry clothes on, because if after all this you die of pneumonia I - don’t think I have words for what I will do.’ 

Iwaizumi, after a disbelieving pause, burst out laughing. ‘I just told you that I love you, and you’re worried about pneumonia?’

Oikawa felt his eyes beginning to swim. ‘If we mess this up at the final hurdle, Iwa-chan…’ He shook his head, unable to convey the depths of despair he felt at the thought of it. ‘We have to do this right.’ 

Iwaizumi’s expression softened into one of understanding, and he held up his hands in a gesture of placation. ‘Okay. Okay.’ 

Oikawa sniffed, wiping his eyes, feeling very foolish, and very young. He fetched warm, thick blankets, and handed them to Iwaizumi, along with some of his own clothes: sweatpants and a hoodie. 

They made their way to the living room through the dark, silent corridors. Oikawa only turned the light on a little way: there was a certain comfort in the shadows. Oikawa’s knee was beginning to hurt again, but he didn’t want to sit down; he felt too nervous. 

It was happening, then. He had never dared to imagine something so definitive - never, in all his lonely late nights, had he imagined Iwaizumi confessing in a way that was so undeniable - so final. It was the kind of moment that should have been accompanied by a choir of angels, and peals of church bells, but, in reality, they were in a dark house at three in the morning, with Iwaizumi soaked through, and Oikawa more nervous than thrilled. 

Iwaizumi started pulling off his wet clothes. The hoodie fell to the floor with a damp thunk, and Oikawa tore his eyes away, weighted them to the floor, when Iwaizumi started pulling at the clinging t-shirt. It was partly old habits dying hard - ever since they had been thirteen years old, at Kitagawa Daiichi, Oikawa had found it impossible to look at Iwaizumi’s body without feeling terribly exposed. He had felt as though everyone knew what he was trying not to think, and everyone hated him for it behind his back. 

Maybe it would be different now, Oikawa thought. Maybe the shame wouldn’t feel so much like acid wearing away at his soul. Maybe, one day soon, he would be able to just see Iwaizumi - his Iwa-chan, his other half since birth - rather than a physical representation of all the things he hadn’t allowed himself to want, or feel, or have. But it wasn’t that day, yet: he was still afraid, and angry with himself for letting the fear run unchecked. 

Iwaizumi said, ‘You know, you don’t have to pretend like you don’t want to.’ His voice was low and kind, but Oikawa felt fresh, oozing embarrassment at the fact that even after so long apart, Iwaizumi could read him with effortless ease. ‘You can look.’ 

‘I can’t,’ Oikawa mumbled, counting the tufts on the rug. 

‘It’s okay,’ Iwaizumi said, ‘you can.’ 

Oikawa laughed, resurfacing a little. ‘This is some pervert stuff, Iwa-chan.’ 

‘I’ll let you have that one,’ Iwaizumi said, ‘because you look two seconds away from passing out, but…’ He drew his finger across his throat, but he was smiling as he took off his shirt, and Oikawa swallowed, and this time, he didn’t look away, and when their eyes met, he knew that Iwaizumi knew what that meant. 

It was as frightening as he had feared. It felt as though every secret thought he’d ever had about Iwaizumi was being revealed, like stained sheets under a blacklight. He felt sure that Iwaizumi would see them - would be disgusted, and leave, and Oikawa would be alone again, with nothing but his money and his headshots to fall back on. He knew that he was shaking, but he dragged his eyes across Iwaizumi’s body anyway, forcing himself look at what had, he was beginning to realise, always been on offer. My Iwa-chan, he thought experimentally. Mine. 

Iwaizumi did turn away when he wrestled his jeans off - whether from a sense of shyness or simply to protect Oikawa’s delicate sensibilities Oikawa wasn’t sure - and Oikawa was relieved that he didn’t have to confront that view just yet. 

‘You satisfied?’ Iwaizumi asked, when he was dressed again, in too-long pants, and a slightly-too-small hoodie. He kicked a leg out so that the cuff rolled over his foot. ‘I look like a dick.’ 

‘Well, you’ll be used to that then,’ Oikawa said, squinting up at him.

Iwaizumi’s mouth tilted up at the corner, looking pleased that Oikawa was, at least, stable enough to engage in their usual back-and-forth. He sat down heavily on Oikawa’s sofa, immediately making himself comfortable, and Oikawa, after a moment, joined him at the other end, drawing his legs up to under his chin, his bad knee a little further out. 

‘Now,’ Iwaizumi said, ‘can we go back to talking?’

‘I wasn’t saying anything,’ Oikawa muttered, biting his fingernails and refusing to look at the man next to him. ‘You were saying it.’ 

Iwaizumi sighed. ‘You wanna say something now?’ 

Oikawa took a deep breath, the years tumbling through his mind like flashcards. Their greatest hits. The two of them, together, since birth. Oikawa had never lived in a world without Iwaizumi. He never wanted to. Maybe that was what love was. ‘It’s hard.’ He took another slow, long breath, letting air fill his lungs, and letting it out again. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said, letting out of a breath of nervous air in a vague approximation of a laugh. 

Iwaizumi was watching him quietly, letting him take his time, never pushing. ‘Just say what’s true.’ 

And Oikawa was so tired. Tired of being afraid, and of being lonely, and of wanting things that he could have had, if he’d just asked for them. The fear had burrowed inside his soul, made a home there, wasted ten years of his life. But he could not allow it to stay anymore, because he was here, and Iwaizumi was here, and this time, he would do everything differently. It was finished. He would not run again. 

‘I love you too,’ Oikawa said haltingly, and it did hurt a little to say it out loud, but less than he'd thought it would. And it was a good kind of pain, he thought - like excising an infection, or the ache after a good workout. ‘And… I’m so sorry for everything. For literally everything, actually, because our whole lives I’ve been mean and self-centred and obsessed with winning, and…’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry I left.’ 

‘It’s okay,’ Iwaizumi said, ‘you were a kid.’ 

Oikawa scanned Iwaizumi’s face for any trace of lingering resentment, but he found nothing there except kindness. Iwaizumi was a better man than he was, he thought, not for the first time. 

Iwaizumi reached across the sofa, and touched Oikawa’s ankle with his index finger, stroking it gently. The intimacy of it took Oikawa’s breath away. ‘You need to stop thinking so much.’ 

‘You’ve told me that since I was born,’ Oikawa said grimly. ‘It’s not going to change.’ 

Iwaizumi scooted a little closer, and rested his head on Oikawa’s shoulder. His eyelashes were fluttering open and closed in a slow rhythm. It suddenly occurred to Oikawa that Iwaizumi would not have had the time to sleep.

‘Do you remember when we were kids?’ Oikawa mumbled. ‘And we would always sleep in the same bed - but not just sleep; we would stay up all night, just talking.’ 

From the small amount that Oikawa could see, Iwaizumi’s expression was very soft. ‘Yeah.’ 

‘And then we got older, and we had to sleep in separate beds.’

Iwaizumi made a snuffling sound of agreement. 

‘Did you… miss it?’ Oikawa whispered, feeling as though he had been flayed to the nerve. 'Did you wish that we hadn't stopped?'

Iwaizumi didn’t answer, but he swallowed heavily, which was answer enough. His hand had moved from Oikawa’s ankle up to his bad knee, stroking it with a tenderness that Oikawa didn’t know how to counter. ‘Does that hurt?’

‘No,’ Oikawa said truthfully. ‘It doesn’t hurt much anymore.’ He shifted a little, and, daringly, rested his head on Iwaizumi’s shoulder. 

‘You see,’ Iwaizumi said, teasingly, ‘it’s not that scary.’ 

Oikawa snorted. ‘Shut up,’ he said, not quite willing to agree, yet. 

Iwaizumi yawned loudly and rested his own head back against the sofa. ‘I’m gonna fall asleep in a minute.’ 

Oikawa thought about the spare futon he had, tucked away in a dusty cupboard. He imagined Iwaizumi sleeping in that, on the floor somewhere - maybe in the living room, maybe in his own room. He thought about his own bed, huge and white like a glacier, and just as cold, when it was only him in it. ‘Remember when he were kids?’ he asked again, hoping that Iwaizumi understood him - because Iwaizumi always understood him. 

Iwaizumi’s hand stilled, on his knee. ‘Really?’ 

‘Yeah,’ Oikawa mumbled. He narrowed his eyes. ‘But this isn’t - I’m not suggesting that we -’ 

‘Of course not,’ Iwaizumi said, straight-faced. ‘That would be terrible.’ 

Oikawa groaned and covered his face, feeling the blood run hot into his cheeks, and Iwaizumi laughed, snaking his arms around Oikawa’s waist, and squeezing. It felt good, Oikawa realised, letting Iwaizumi touch him like that. He had thought that it would be harder to accept, but what was almost as bothersome was how easy and natural it felt to be curled up on the sofa with Iwaizumi. He had wasted so much time. He had lost out on so much joy. 

Iwaizumi yawned again, and he did look exhausted, Oikawa thought. And he was tired, too, even though the full scope of that tiredness had been kept at bay by the sheer potency of the revelations that just kept piling on top of each other. But they had lulled into a fragile peace, and the low light was pulling Oikawa towards sleep, too. 

‘Let’s go,’ Oikawa said, before he lost his nerve again, and levered himself up from the sofa. Iwaizumi followed him, yawning again, rubbing his eyes. Oikawa reached out and gripped Iwaizumi’s hand, tightly, and pulled him down the corridor towards the bedroom. Bravery, Oikawa was beginning to realise, looked less like staring down a 200cm opponent, and more like the feeling of another man’s hand in his own. 

Once inside the bedroom, Oikawa was grateful when Iwaizumi didn’t ask whether he was sure; he just got under the covers, and started thumbing at his phone. 

‘’Who are you talking to?’ Oikawa asked suspiciously, as he slid underneath the sheets too. 

Iwaizumi had the grace to look a little guilty. ‘Hanamaki.’ 

Oikawa felt something slot into place. ‘He gave you my address, didn’t he?’ 

‘Yeah,’ Iwaizumi admitted. ‘It didn’t take much convincing, given all the shit he’s already pulled.’ 

They were sitting politely apart, on either sides of an invisible line. It had been, Oikawa supposed, what he’d wanted, but now that they were there, he wanted to erase that line completely - to let their bodies entangle and mix, to be together in every way. 

‘Iwa-chan.’ 

‘Hm?’ Iwaizumi looked up, and seemed, again, to implicitly understand. He held out an arm, and Oikawa was swept up in a tsunami of relief, letting it carry him towards Iwaizumi’s warm, welcoming body. He lay his head on Iwaizumi’s chest, listening to the steady pulse that tethered him to Oikawa.

They’d kissed, Oikawa thought, but they’d never held each other like this. He mourned every second that he had wasted - which as far as he was concerned was every moment that he’d not been able to fill his senses with his Iwa-chan: the familiar deodorant, the golden skin that Oikawa had always been a little jealous of, and here, tonight, his wet hair leaving little wet marks on the pillows, the smell of city rain trapped in the strands. 

‘This is okay, after all,’ Oikawa said, a whispered prayer to himself, but Iwaizumi kissed him hard on the top of his head, and squeezed him hard, and Oikawa thought that, actually, it wasn’t okay - it was better than that. 

**6 months later**

Summer was hanging on past its sell-by date. The evenings were long, and the mornings dawned slow and warm. The apples on Iwaizumi’s trees were fat and shiny, and Oikawa had already tried to make two apple pies with them. After both attempts had ended up in kitchen evacuations, Iwaizumi put his foot down: no more pies. They switched to eating apples straight from the tree, instead, the juice running down their wrists in sticky rivulets.

Oikawa had stayed late at Seijoh that evening, discussing tactics with Irihata, and by the time he got back the air was as golden as buttered toast. He picked his way through the long, dry grass, and Iwaizumi lifted up a hand in greeting from where he was sitting, sorting seed packets into little piles. Oikawa walked up behind him, and casually kissed the top of his head, slinging his arms around Iwaizumi’s shoulders.

‘How were they?’ Iwaizumi asked, as he always did, leaning into the kiss, as he always did. 

‘They were good today,’ Oikawa said, contentedly, sitting down in one of the white plastic chairs, putting his bakery bag on the table. ‘I bought more milk bread.’ He sighed woefully. ‘Domestic bliss is making me fat, Iwa-chan.’

‘Very true,’ Iwaizumi said absently, turning back to the seed packets, smiling down at them when Oikawa made a wounded sound. ‘You wanna help me with the last lot of apples? I’m bored with sorting.’ 

Oikawa raised his eyebrows. ‘What are you gonna do with them?’

‘I thought that I might make a pie,’ Iwaizumi said, putting great emphasis on the word ‘I’. 

‘Do we just not know anything else to cook?’ Oikawa muttered, snorting. ‘We are useless, Iwa-chan.’ 

‘I know there are other things that are … possible to cook,’ Iwaizumi said, failing to meet the dignity he had been aiming for. He got up and stretched his back like a cat, and Oikawa followed him, letting his eyes fall without shame on the peachy globe of Iwaizumi’s ass.

Iwaizumi said, ‘I know what you’re doing, pervert.’ 

‘You encouraged this,’ Oikawa said, skipping forward so that he could pull Iwaizumi into his arms and kiss him deep and sure. Iwaizumi allowed it for a moment, melting into it like candle wax, before pulling back, and opening their front door, turning to look at Oikawa, grinning. 

Oikawa gazed at him, fully aware of the stars in his own eyes, almost struck dumb by them. Iwaizumi’s summer skin was so brown, and he exuded the kind of health that magazines wrote sycophantic articles about. People took endless amounts of vitamins, and they refused bread, and they ate plain boiled vegetables, just to look even a little bit like him. And Iwaizumi, in all his glory, belonged to him, entirely - as fully as his shoes, or his jacket, or his old Seijoh uniform. 

Iwaizumi frowned. ‘Do I have something on my face?’ 

‘No, oh my God, you idiot,’ Oikawa said breathlessly, and kissed him again - just because he could, just because he had to. 

Iwaizumu slammed the door shut behind them, and headed into the kitchen, putting on a Godzilla-print apron, tying it into a rough knot behind his back. ‘Come on. I’ll let you slice stuff.’ 

Oikawa rolled his eyes, following Iwaizumi into their kitchen. 

‘Ready when you are,’ Iwaizumi said, kissing him again, and Oikawa thought, I’m ready _now_ , Iwa-chan - I’m ready now.

**Author's Note:**

> oof well it's been over 2 years since i last posted anything - but here we go folks! i actually started writing this WAY back in 2019 and the canon has changed since then - but i liked this enough to publish it, and i hope you all do too <3 am i outrageously obsessed with this exact plot? i SURE AM! am i also projecting heavily about being in my late twenties? YEAH!
> 
> twitter @ [weirdlymilky](https://twitter.com/weirdlymilky) (very rarely used - but if people follow me on it i'll have to start posting, and yes, that's a threat)


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